In lieu of taking our annual summer break, we’ve decided to extend our season so that we can bring you yet another amazing event! Join us at the Vancity Theatre, Thursday July 19th, for this very special presentation.

The Avengers is the ultimate comic-book film, bringing together characters such as Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and a new Hulk. ILM’s Jason Smith will discuss the creation of the Hulk character, including incorporating Mark Ruffalo into the design and performance of the Hulk as well as the steps taken in asset development as far as data acquisition, model, texture, rigging and rendering Hulk for shots. He will discuss the creation of the Shield Helicarrier and fleet assets. In addition, he’ll cover building a new Iron Man and a digital New York City for the Avengers to protect. (more…)

Rush tickets and overflow seating will be released on a first come, first serve basis at 6pm, at the Vancity Theatre, on Tuesday May 15th.

Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to present The Lighting Design of Brave, with Pixar’s Danielle Feinberg, Tuesday May 15th, at the Vancity Theatre.

The upcoming Disney-Pixar film “Brave” is set in the rugged and mysterious Highlands of ancient Scotland. A lush and complex setting was required to bring the adventurous story to life, and intense character work was done for the film’s courageous, curly red-haired heroine Merida, her family and supporting cast. Pixar’s lighting department faced the challenge of bringing these new technologies and higher complexity together, while also leveraging the lighting throughout the film to help guide the audience through the story in this mystical world. Learn more about the lighting process for “Brave” from the film’s Director of Photography-Lighting, Danielle Feinberg. (more…)

Next week, the highly anticipated new SSX game finally hits the shelves. Over three years in development, it IS a massive game… a re-invention of the popular franchise on a whole new scale, with new characters, new game play challenges, 9 mountain ranges, hundreds of tracks, and an epic new visual style.

Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH is excited to host SSX team members Ron Bignell, Caleb Howard, and Frank Vitz, who will take you through their creative journey, describing the technical challenges they faced on the project, and sharing some of the solutions they and the SSX development team came up with along the way to creating the Massive World of SSX.

Senior Art Director Ron Bignell will take a look at the artistic implications of the re-invention of SSX for the Gen 3 platforms; how to take a much loved franchise with deep arcade style roots and debut it on the Gen 3 consoles, how to make it appeal to the existing fan base and attract a new one and how to find an art direction style that walks the line between arcade game play and stunning realistic visuals.

CG Supervisor Caleb Howard will describe the challenges of creating the huge amount of SSX content needed to be competitive against today’s block buster games; Researching the epic mountain ranges of the world, exploring NASA and Google Earth, and developing new algorithms, were all part of the journey. The end result was a set of procedural track creation tools and work flows that became a key to the team’s success.

Technical VFX Director Frank Vitz will share the dev team’s quest for a new visual style for SSX, and how they leveraged advanced rendering techniques in support of an exaggerated yet realistic looking world, using such techniques as HDR, deferred rendering, atmospheric scatter, weather effects, snow spray and the signature SSX “Tricky” effects.

Join us next Wednesday, February 29th, at the Vancity theater for an inside look at the Massive World of SSX.